by Brian Lumley
As it came, a row of greedy, suctorial mouths rippled into metamorphic being along its length. They slobbered and grimaced those mouths—and they had human teeth! But far worse, some of them were reforming, shaping themselves into tumescent, purple-veined penises!
Jake felt rooted to the spot, for the moment paralysed. It seemed to him that the whole mass of the thing beyond the walkway was now on the move, edging towards him—and certainly towards Liz! And that was enough.
He unfroze, fought Liz off, brought up the flamethrower’s nozzle and squeezed the trigger to get its pilot light going—then cursed vividly as nothing happened, and squeezed it again, and again, and yet again, before it lit—then gripped the firing lever and applied a steady, deadly pressure.
First Jake aimed down between his spread legs, aimed at the rearing pseudopods to drive them back, and his relief was immense as he watched them burst into flames and shrivel in the incandescent, pressured heat of his lance. Then he scrambled to his feet, and with Liz dancing close behind, clutching his combat jacket and urging him on, so he advanced toward the walkway and the bulk of the thing that hissed and steamed and shuddered its agony there.
And as the tentacles writhed, dripped their fluids, blackened and shrank—and as the main body withdrew into itself—there, sprouting in the floor where its bulk had protected them, clusters of small black mushrooms, dozens of them, were melting in the chemical fire. Their smell was nauseating, but Jake kept on firing; kept cursing, too, as Malinari’s “garden” burned.
But this was vampire stuff, tenacious and defiant.
The shrinking body of the mass burst open, and a steaming head—a human, or almost-human head, and shoulders—grew out of it. Again Jake felt himself gripped by a paralysis of disbelief. Yet the nightmare was here and undeniably real.
But so was Korath here, and so was he real. And in Jake’s mind as the livid vampire head took shape: It is him! Korath’s deadspeak voice hissed. De-metrakis Mindsthrall, who was Malinari’s lieutenant, second only to myself! Because be had been a vampire for long and long, Malinari used him to make this garden. It must be so, for only the most contaminated flesh could ever have produced a crop such as this! Ah, but just think. If there had been no Demetrakis, then this would be me! And so it seems I got the better of the bargain after all …
“Whoever it was, it’s time he died,” said Jake.
Aye, Korath agreed. The true death. I know he would thank you for it. And Jake hosed fire on the terrible thing where it mewled and melted, until his torch began to sputter.
Then he eased back on the flamer’s lever, to see what damage he’d done, and if he had done enough. The cave steamed and smoked but was mainly still—except in one badly lit corner. There was some slight movement there, and Jake advanced across the smoking floor, making sure as he went that he stepped only where there was no sign of contamination.
But as he approached the corner: “H-help me!” the faintest of whispers reached out to him. “H-h-help me, pleeeease!”
A single short burst of fire from the flamethrower chased back the shadows, then a longer burst, to allow for confirmation of what Jake had seen. And indeed he needed such confirmation.
From the neck up the thing in the corner was a man … and from there on down it had been a man. But now the eyes in that purple, once-arrogant, once-querulous face were bulging, staring, terrified—and they were filled with such agony as Jake could only imagine.
As for the “body” of this thing: that was a slumped, naked heap of limbless, alien flesh similar to the composition of the monstrous guardian of Malinari’s garden. And Jake couldn’t stop his gorge rising—felt sick to his stomach—as it dawned on him in a sudden burst of loathing that this mutated abnormality was once a man, and that it or he had been converted into live nourishment for the garden and its guardian!
Finger-thick, pulsing, translucent arteries—like fleshy worms—even now connected the two forms, and toward the centre of the cave where Jake’s fire had seared and split the guardian open, spurts of yellow and crimson plasma went to waste, fountaining uselessly in the smoky air.
All of which was bad enough, but worse by far was the fact that Jake knew who this travesty of a human being had been.
That Peter Miller “lived” in his condition—if this could be called life—and that he was capable of realizing his fate and asking for help, was a miracle in itself. But it was also a curse that Jake would wish on no man, not even his worst enemy.
For this was worse than any death, compared to which death would be a blessing. And when Miller found strength to ask once more, “Please … please help me!” then Jake was happy to grant his request. It didn’t take long, but it used up the last dregs of the flamer’s fuel.
When it was over, Jake steadied himself and turned to Liz. But still his face was ashen as he asked, “Where now?”
“You can actually do it?” Almost back in possession of herself, still Liz clutched his jacket. “The Möbius Continuum?”
“Yes,” he told her. “We … I mean I, can do it.”
“The bubble dome,” she told him. “Ben is up there. There’s something I have to tell him. We walked right into a trap, Jake, all of us, and I think that we’re still in danger. Malinari was in my mind, imitating Ben! But at the end—just before he left me in this place—then for a moment I was in his mind! Telepathy is a two-way thing, but my forte is as a receiver. And Malinari … he was oh so sure of himself! I think that maybe he’s sabotaged this place! I sensed it there, in his mind.”
“When you called out to me,” Jake answered, “I heard something of what he said to you. You’re right: he seemed very sure of himself. Perhaps too sure.”
And Liz nodded and repeated, “The dome, on top of the casino. Take us there.”
“Hold on to me,” Jake told her, for he had flown over Xanadu and knew the coordinates. And Korath knew the numbers … .
In his vantage point in the cliff, Malinari allowed his fingers to drift over the array of switches and pondered his choice. By now the girl was being absorbed into his garden, and that was a shame … that he hadn’t been able to stay with her, within her mind, to explain what was happening to her and feel her terror; but no, for he had other things to do.
His mist was up; it lay knee-deep, swirling through Xanadu from one end of the resort to the other. It was like a spider’s web, that mist, carrying every faintest tremor back to its master and maker. A medium for his probes, it allowed him to touch the human flies that were “trapped” within it; he knew the location of every man in Xanadu. But there were those for whom no mist was needed.
The locator for one: injured, holding his head, he sat inside that car down there … such a pity the area wasn’t mined. Then there was the so-called precog, and Ben Trask, together in the bubble. At this close range their talents were like magnets drawing Malinari’s attention to the topmost dome; he could feel them there! But the bubble was mined; all it wanted was a touch on a certain switch in his array.
And again his hand hovered tantalizingly over that central switch … . But no, he must stick to the original plan, let them know the error of their ways before they died. First the perimeter, to let them see how truly he had trapped them, and then he would work inwards, leaving the bubble itself until the last.
And now his fingers were sure and fast, as one by one they tripped the outer ring of switches … .
Through the wound-down window of the car, the locator was suddenly aware of a strange figure approaching out of the mist. The mist was very bad here, drifting over the car and obscuring his vision. But Chung had been in far worse places, and he was equipped with a machine-pistol.
The strangely lumbering, mist-wreathed figure came closer, and the sights of Chung’s weapon were centered upon it. Then he saw the blaze of a reflective patch, sighed, and allowed himself to slump a little. It was a soldier—an NCO, carrying another soldier in the fireman’s lift position, which accounted for the many-armed, monstrous si
lhouette. As that fact dawned, so Chung was out of the vehicle, calling out:
“Over here! Bring him to the car.” Then, behind the two, a third figure came weaving, on his feet but barely so. Recognizing the staggering loner as Warrant Officer Red Bygraves, the locator went to meet him. “Are you okay?” He got under the other’s left arm, took his weight. “Can I help you?”
“I’ll live,” Bygraves growled. And then, seeing the eagerness, the urgency in the locator’s eyes: “What is it?”
“Your radio,” Chung said. “Is it working, and can you call the chopper down? I know where the bastard is! I know where Malinari’s hiding!”
Bygraves’s eyes lit up with a fierce, fighting light. Gritting his teeth, and flicking his face mike with a fingernail to get Chopper One’s attention, he told the locator, “Oh, I’ll get him down okay. Just tell me where you want him to lay down his fire, that’s all …”
From what little Trask, Goodly, and the SAS major could see of the interior of the bubble dome, it was a sumptuously appointed split-level affair of marble, chrome, and tan-coloured leather. Five marble-clad stanchions surrounded the single elevator tube and supported the high ceiling. The elevator opened into a central well, with concentric steps climbing to the living or work area. The place was lit, however dimly, by a sprinkling of tiny blue lights which formed, against the ceiling’s jet-black backdrop, miniature constellations in a fair imitation of the night sky. Blue-tinged, the dusky-velvet atmosphere reminded Trask of nothing so much as a Starside night, which made the bubble seem even more an aerie.
That, however, was the extent of Trask’s and his colleagues’ knowledge of the place; for from the moment of their arrival when the elevator doors had hissed open, they had been under fire and pinned down. In fact their exit from the elevator cage—which in any event had been planned as a rapid deployment—had been hastened by a volley of shots that had sounded as soon as the doors were fully open, and a spray of bullets that chipped splinters from the marble columns where the three had taken shelter. All of which had felt very wrong to Trask.
He and the others had made such ideal targets in the elevator’s confined space, he just couldn’t imagine anyone missing his aim … especially someone who had been waiting for them to emerge from that precise spot! Yet no one had been hit, though for several nerve-wracking minutes now they had been obliged to keep their heads down to avoid sporadic single shots.
Thus, deep down inside Trask sensed (or his talent advised him) that he and his colleagues were being played with; or that they were simply being played, reeled in, like so many sardines on a single line. And he knew they dared not allow this stalemate to continue to the enemy’s prearranged conclusion.
Now, as he glanced across the well of curving steps at the dark figures of the precog and the major crouching behind their individual columns, he wondered what to do next.
As for the sniper (if anyone so inept was worthy of such a title), it seemed that he must be a man or a vampire alone. All of his weapon’s muzzle-flashes had been sighted in just the one location on the higher level, and there had been no other sound or movement from anywhere else. And Trask sensed, he just knew, that whoever this was, it wasn’t Malinari.
But then it came to him that indeed there had been another sound: muted, repetitious music that came from one glowing spot, an antique jukebox, in the velvet darkness of the higher level. And the music—a plaintive song—was only repetitious in that it had been playing when first they’d arrived, had played again while they were pinned down, and was now into its second encore, curtain call, or whatever.
But curtain call? A farewell? Some kind of message, maybe? And for the first time Trask listened to the song. A moderately fast-paced and yet bluesy ballad, it was sung by Ray Charles, a favourite from Trask’s youth:
“Sunshine, you may find my window but you won’t find me … .”
And now it seemed to Trask that the coffee, sex, and cigarettes voice mocked not only the sun but also Ben Trask himself. For indeed sunshine might find the high blind windows of Malinari’s aerie, but it certainly wouldn’t find Malinari! Nor would Trask. The song was a message; but more yet, it was the mocking laughter of a monster! It mocked Trask, E-Branch, the military, and all their combined efforts.
So that now, in the heightened anxiety of this sudden knowledge, he used the temporary lull between shots to shout across to the major: “We have to get done here. So what’s next?”
The major had not been idle; he’d been working out the sniper’s position for himself, and now believed he’d got it right. Lighting a flare, and a moment later pulling the pin on a grenade, he called out, “This is what’s next. Hit the deck—now!”
The warning was timely. Even with his eyes tightly closed and sheltered by the column, still Trask saw the blinding white light blossoming through the membrane of his eyelids … and at the same time he heard and indeed felt the terrific report that shook the floor and shattered glass fixtures into flying shards. Then there was a stunned silence and cordite stench, and at the last a mewling whimper rising to a scream.
A tattered male figure came staggering, wreathed in smoke, himself smoking. His eyes were feral in the gloom. And the major, Trask, and Goodly didn’t wait to see what he would do or if he was capable of doing anything, but cut him down in a withering crossfire.
“We got him! We got Malinari!” The major stood up, started forward up the marble steps. But as the precog and Trask joined him, the latter was already shaking his head.
“That isn’t Malinari,” Trask coughed a denial into the now smoky atmosphere. “And this isn’t over yet. The elevator’s gone and we’re trapped. Trapped by the very creature we’re trying to destroy … .”
His words were portentous of the sudden thunder, the gouting fire and blazing light that at once rocked the night beyond the shattered windows. The three men looked at each other, then hurriedly crossed the floor to look out and down on a scene out of Dante’s Inferno. On the far perimeter of Xanadu, disintegrating chalets erupted in red and yellow ruin, and fireballs lifted their mushroom heads to the night sky. But Trask was right: it wasn’t over yet.
For as the three stood there watching, impotent of action, so midway between the burning perimeter and the casino a second series of tenific explosions, then a third, ripped through the shattered resort. Concentric rings of destruction were closing in on the Pleasure Dome, hurling flaming debris aloft and turning night to day.
“Now he springs the trap,” Trask husked. “Xanadu is no use to him now and he’ll destroy it, and us with it. So this is it. We’re next!”
“The place is wired, mined!” The major’s face was ashen. “I should have known it from the very first explosion, the one that took one of my men.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” said Trask. “We’ve all been equally stupid. And that bastard is sitting somewhere watching us, knowing that by now we know. I don’t suppose there’s any point asking you to call the chopper down?”
“Wouldn’t if I could,” the other shook his head. “No way—not into this lot. But in any case my radio’s been out since we got into the lift. Some kind of electrical interference.”
As he finished speaking, so Ian Goodly reeled and caught at the major’s arm to steady himself. “Jake!” the precog gasped. “My God, Ben—it’s Jake!”
“Jake?” Trask repeated him. “What about him?”
“He … he’s on his way here,” Goodly answered. “But so is the elevator!”
“Jake’s in the elevator?” Trask failed to understand.
“No,” Goodly shook his head. “Jake is in the Möbius Continuum. The bomb is in the elevator! When I staggered just now, it was because I’d seen it going off—but seen it at close range, even this close—and it’s due to happen any time now!”
The major might have asked what they were raving about but didn’t have time. In a sudden stirring of smoky air, Jake stepped out of the Möbius Continuum with Liz clinging to him like a leech�
��and at the same time the elevator pinged and its doors hissed open.
Jake and Liz were staggering, disoriented; the major didn’t know what was going on; and the precog, knowing he was about to die, couldn’t take his eyes off the elevator. Ben Trask was the only one who saw the “truth” of it and knew what to do.
“To me!” he shouted. “To me!” And without waiting he swept them into his arms, bundled all four of them close to himself.
“What?” Jake said, completely out of the picture.
“Make a door!” Trask shouted at him. “For God’s sake, make a goddamned door! Make a big one, and I mean right now!”
And Jake, and Korath, they made a door.
The blast took them right through it, all five (or six of of them, with Korath), through the door into the Mobius Continuum. And in the hot blast and the fire that followed them, Jake knew only one safe place to take them. He remembered those suntanned, near-naked bodies sprawling indolently, and the shadow of the helicopter dark on the sparkling water. And he knew the coordinates.
Down they went in one of Xanadu’s pools, and coughing and spluttering they surfaced …
… In time to see Chopper One at altitude 150 feet, wheeling to face the backdrop of cliffs, steadying up and sitting like a hawk on the air, and opening up with its nose cannons on no clearly discernible target.
In his once-secret hiding place, Malinari saw it, too, and didn’t believe it. But as cannon-fire ripped the chimney’s facade to shreds he had to believe it. And while he still had time he tripped the rest of his switches. Then, with his thin clothing tearing under the pressure of madly metamorphosing flesh—and his bolthole hideaway collapsing around him—Malinari made a headlong dive through his window of observation, out into the night.